Texas Retailers Sue Austin Over Single-Use Bag Ban (Update)

Update: Alexandria Bruton, Public Information Specialist with the City of Austin, has issued the following statement on the bags lawsuit:

“Although the City has not yet been served with the lawsuit, we are familiar with the allegations and we are prepared to defend the ordinance. We stand behind the intent of the ordinance and do not believe it poses a hardship to affected businesses. The City is committed to working with businesses to help them comply with the ordinance and offers a number of resources to make this process as easy as possible.”

Original post: Austin’s ban on single-use bags starts Friday. But a business group hasn’t stopped fighting against it.

The Texas Retailers Association has filed a lawsuit against the city, arguing the ban is against the state's Health and Safety Code. “We are bringing this suit regarding a state statue that we only fairly recently became aware of, which says no local government may pass an ordinance that prohibits or restricts baggage or containers like plastic bags," association president Ronnie Volkening said.

The lawsuit won’t keep the ban from going into effect on Friday since the group did not ask for an injunction, but it seeks an opinion on the ordinance's validity.

Volkening said that the retailers group had previously worked with the city between 2008 and 2009 in a voluntary recycling campaign. He added the current ordinance does not ban a range of other plastic bags he argues are just as harmful and costly to address as grocers' single-use plastic bags. He argued that a similar, voluntary program would be "less disruptive and less onerous on the consumers and frankly more comprehensive in that all types of plastic bags get addressed."

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Correction: The City of Austin disputes the expense of social media outreach in its reusable bag campaign. See the update below for more.

Austin’s plastic bag ban goes into effect in eight days, and city officials are pulling in a celebrity endorsement for their campaign: Willie Nelson.

Or, his statue at least.

"One bag just like the one Willie Nelson is holding literally can replace hundreds … six hundred or so … thin plastic bags that you see today,” city council member Mike Martinez said at a press conference in front of the bronze Nelson statue outside the ACL Live theater downtown.

Austin is a little more than a month away from its plastic bag ban, and some questions are still up in the air.

The Austin City Council approved the change last year, and the Single-Use Carryout Bag Ordinance stipulates that single-use bags for sacking groceries will soon be phased out – meaning Austinites must make use of reusable grocery bags. And as a precaution, shoppers should make sure their bags see more than the checkout aisle – try the laundry room.

Most Austin businesses, whether big or small, have until now bought plastic bags in bulk to save money. Big department stores and retailers can go through thousands of bags in a matter of days. But for smaller stores it can take months to use up inventory. So what will those businesses do with all those bags?